Brian Lavelle

Crashing Heaven is hitting the streets tomorrow. To celebrate, I thought I’d write a bit about some of the sounds that helped me write it. Finding the right soundtrack was very important – it helped me pin down the mood I was after for Jack and Fist’s adventures and imagine the world they were moving through.

So, here are some of the most important musical inspirations for Crashing Heaven. It’s just general soundtrack stuff – there’ll be more on some specific character related music in a bit. Oh, and it’s the music that worked for me as I was writing, but it’s definitely not the only possible CH soundtrack. If there’s anything completely different that’s in your mind as you read it, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

John Foxx / My Lost City / The Garden

John Foxx’s “My Lost City” was a very big inspiration. There’s something hauntingly elegiac about it. That resonated very strongly with Jack’s feelings as he returned to a place that was no longer his home. It’s also a very numinous album, shot through with choral tones that hark back to Foxx’s childhood. I felt the distant presence of the gods in it.

“The Garden” was very important too. As soon as I heard the album, I knew that I’d found a very important part of the book’s soundtrack. “Europe After The Rain” and “Swimmer 2” stood out in particular. Both of them are wonderfully propulsive, but both also have a deep undertow of dream, sadness and loss. Their very 80s synth sound also give them a lovely retro-futuristic feeling.

The Black Dog / Music for Real Airports

The Black Dog’s wonderful album was mostly composed in transit. It captures the bland anonymity of modern non-places perfectly. They’re the kind of places that Jack and Fist spend a lot of time exploring – industrial estates, corporate lobbies, customs facilities, transit stops, shopping malls and service corridors.

In particular, I often had “Wait Behind This Line” on repeat play, hammering at the keyboard in sync with its slow, stately, droning build. It nails the sense of vast, impersonal power that suffuses Station. The strings that grow through it add something achingly human. It helped me imagine Jack and Fist’s fraught, determined progress towards the truth.

Brian Lavelle / Fallen Are The Domes Of Green Amber

A few years ago, Brian Lavelle put out this lovely album. It’s made up of two long, slow, stately drones, both rich with evocative majesty and uncluttered enough to set your imagination working hard. It’s great to write to. Unfortunately, it’s not available online.

So, instead, here’s “Suburban Electrification”, which is also a very evocative listen, though in a slightly different way:

Slowdive / Pygmalion

I wish I’d picked up on Slowdive’s majestic album when it first came out, back in 1995. As it is, I only came across it while I was editing “Crashing Heaven”. Listening to it was an amazing experience – it’s a wonderful soundtrack for late night in Docklands, when the gods are dormant, the spinelights have dimmed almost to nothing and the hard rain has managed all but the most determined nighthawks off the streets.

Much excitement at Allumination Towers as Interzone 235 has just come out. It includes my novella ‘Of Dawn’ – more details / buy a copy here. The story’s been rather beautifully illustrated by Richard Wagner, he’s caught its mood perfectly. Alas, this is the biggest version of it I could find; to get the full effect, snap up your copy of Interzone!

And of course, there’s a lot of music in the story. Some of the sounds that helped inspire it are name-checked in the story, but there’s some other very important stuff that (in the end) its protagonist Sarah didn’t run into. I thought I’d share some of it here…

That’s ‘Rattler’s Hey’ by Belbury Poly, from their album ‘The Owl’s Map’. They’re one of the Ghost Box roster of artists – strange and wonderful music from a strange and wonderful label, and a big inspiration for the story.

Brian’s hypnotic, evocative music is all too easy to lose yourself in – I’ve tried and failed to write about it directly, the best thing to do is just open up your mind and listen. Check out more of his work here at his website.

And finally, that’s ‘The Pheasant’ from Matt Berry’s mighty ‘Witchazel’ (imagine Ronnie Hazlehurst’s great lost pyschedelic soul album, and you’re part way there). For more, here’s his MySpace page – plus my ramblings about ‘The Badger’s Wake’, one of the album’s key songs, in a previous blog post.